


baby, let's cruise away

by Damkianna



Category: Gunmen (1994)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Extra Treat, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:08:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21948595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Damkianna/pseuds/Damkianna
Summary: The giddy relief carried them along just fine for the first hour or two coming out of Puerto Vallarta.
Relationships: Cole Parker/Dani Servigo
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	baby, let's cruise away

**Author's Note:**

  * For [galerian_ash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/galerian_ash/gifts).



> I just couldn't help myself. /o\ :D Happy Yuletide!
> 
> Title borrowed from the lyrics of Smokey Robinson's "Cruisin'".

The giddy relief carried them along just fine for the first hour or two coming out of Puerto Vallarta.

Cole felt flooded by it, lifted up—like it was an ocean, same as the one he was looking at, and he was the boat he was standing in. Because they'd _lived_. Goddamn. They'd lived, and they'd gotten out of there, and the money was one hell of a cherry on top. He still almost couldn't believe that gambit had worked. But it had, and now they were safe on the _Gunmen_ , and with even a little luck, they'd stay that way.

And Cole had a feeling luck was on their side, today.

Judging by the look on Dani's face, he had that feeling too. He was grinning wide, bright as the sun off the water around them, every time Cole glanced his way. And Cole couldn't even make fun of him for it, because his cheeks ached with smiling, too.

Once he was sure they were really headed in the right direction, he'd taken a look around the cabin—because money was nice, but it didn't mean much if they didn't have any food or water. Which it turned out they did, plus a few other supplies that were probably going to come in handy. Cole had started learning to hate Karl Servigo, on a real personal level. But he could admit the guy had had a knack for keeping an ace up his sleeve.

And after that, well. There was nothing left to do but lie back and enjoy it.

So that was exactly what he did. Settled down in the bow, with a recliner built out of crates of money, which made him laugh. And he linked his hands behind his head and leaned back with the sun on his face, and let himself be alive for a while.

It felt damn good.

He fell asleep like that, for a little while. Drifted, half-dozing, knowing he shouldn't do it for too long, except he couldn't quite talk himself into getting up before he'd slipped deeper.

It took Dani's hand on his shoulder to rouse him. The first thing he noticed, blinking and rubbing at his eyes, was that the sun had started dropping lower. The second thing was that his leg seriously fucking hurt.

And the third, right there in his head before he could stop it, was that Dani hadn't moved his hand away again.

He bit the inside of his cheek, hard. He was trying not to be stupid here. He really was. But Dani made it a lot more difficult than it ought to be. Cole had given into the temptation more than once already—with that sleep-talking thing, and all. But that had been back when he could tell himself it didn't matter, when he'd still been able to make himself believe all he wanted from Dani was a location.

Now, though, they might actually be a team, the way Dani had liked to say they were. And Cole didn't want to screw that up if he could help it.

So he squinted up at Dani like the weight of Dani's hand wasn't lighting him up from the inside out, and said, "Yeah? What is it?"

"You might want to change that, huh?" Dani said.

Cole looked down. And yeah, all right, Dani had a point: he'd nodded down at Cole's thigh, where the hastily-tied bandage over that gunshot wound was pretty much bled through.

It could use cleaning, too, probably. Do it right and all, now that they weren't running around Puerto Vallarta trying not to get shot by anybody else.

Which reminded him—in a purely decent, reasonable, partners-on-a-team way—to twist around and take a look at Dani's thigh.

And, sure enough, Dani had bled through his, too.

"Same to you, buddy," Cole said.

And Dani blinked at him and looked down at his own thigh, and said, "Oh. Right."

They brought the stuff from the cabin out on the deck for it. More space.

There was gauze in there, and tape—not medical tape, but it would still work fine. Alcohol, too. Bottled booze, not anything that was actually supposed to be for cleaning wounds, but they weren't spoiled for choice there either.

Then they had everything ready, except themselves. And Cole thought for a second he'd painted himself into a corner, sitting there with Dani on the deck and realizing the next step was stripping their pants off—

"Guess we might as well make it easy on ourselves, eh?" Dani said with a laugh, pulling out a knife and turning it around in his fingers.

Cole swallowed a sigh of relief.

Except, of course, it was kind of awkward trying to make it around the back of the leg. Dani had to keep it held up to do it. His thigh tensed, and shook, and he kept wincing and biting his lip. And jesus, he was going to stab himself if he kept sawing his way along like that.

"All right, all right," Cole said, "come on." He raised his eyebrows, beckoned with his fingertips. "Give it here already. Let me help."

The right thing to do. The decent thing, for somebody on your team. And never mind that it meant moving over next to Dani, with his hand around Dani's bare warm thigh where Dani had already cut, to steady Dani's leg while he sliced cleanly through the rest of the way.

He was right there, and he had the knife. Simple enough to stay put, and just cut through the bandage instead of making Dani pick the knot apart, after it had been soaked with seawater and crusted up with dried blood. He held Dani's leg still and peeled the cloth away, and he was as careful as he could manage but Dani still sucked in a breath between his teeth.

It was a gunshot wound; it didn't look _good_. But it didn't look bad, either. Through and through, no bullet stuck in there, and Cole hadn't aimed for the middle of the thigh, the bone, for a reason—if he'd hit it, Dani wouldn't have been able to walk at all.

Cole reached over and snagged the bottle of booze by the neck, and cracked it open. "Okay, this is probably going to sting a little," he told Dani.

Dani laughed, short, breathless. He already looked kind of pasty.

"Sure," he said. "A little."

"A lot," Cole amended. "On three, all right?"

"Okay," Dani said.

"One," Cole said, and poured.

Dani gritted his teeth and swore a blue streak; Cole held him still and kept pouring for another couple seconds, and then let up. There was going to be some blood soaked into the deck, but he decided he didn't mind. Made the ship even more theirs, in a way.

He unrolled more gauze than he needed, and then used it all up anyway. Couldn't hurt, as long as it wasn't so much that it made it hard for Dani to move his leg around, and as long as Cole was careful not to wrap it too tight.

"So," he said, while he was working. "What's the story with these nuns, anyway?"

"What?" Dani said.

"The nuns," Cole said. "The nuns and the little girl, the ones you want to give some of the money to."

He looked up, away from Dani's thigh. Except it wasn't really that much better, having his hands still on it, circling it, and staring Dani in the face, meeting Dani's eyes.

Dani was staring back at him, blinking.

"Are we," Dani said, and then stopped, swallowing. "Are we really going back?"

"What?" Cole said, a belated echo. "Yeah, sure. Of course. I told you that. I got no problem giving money to nuns and little girls, and we've got to do it before we turn it in to the DEA, because there's no way they'll let us do it after." He laughed a little, just imagining it—walking into HQ and asking if they couldn't possibly have some of that seized evidence back, because there were some nuns in South America who could really use it.

Most of Loomis's stash intact, and just a handful unaccounted for? Lost, or maybe they'd had the estimate wrong to start with—fine. But taking it out after, to give it away? Even Cole wouldn't be able to swing that.

It made perfect sense, really.

But Dani was still staring at him.

"You mean that," Dani said quietly. "We're going all the way back there, just because I said I wanted to."

Something in Cole's chest lurched a little. He wanted to pretend he still couldn't guess what was going through Dani's head, but suddenly that wasn't quite true anymore.

Because where would Dani have gotten the idea that he could say what he thought should happen, and somebody would smile and agree, tell him that sounded great and they'd get on it—and then turn around and not do it? Without even explaining, at that. Without saying a word; letting him think they'd meant it, until it happened one time too many and he finally learned not to believe them in the first place—

Yeah, Cole had a guess.

Fucking Karl, Cole thought, mouth twisting.

Maybe that was why Dani liked it so much—talking about things he wanted to do, spinning stories about how it might turn out. Like the bit about how they were a team, even back when they hadn't been, or about how Karl would've come back for him and they'd have been set for life. The first minute they'd spent together, kissing Cole on the face and telling him _they_ were set for life.

Because that was what he had. Because he'd never been able to make things happen, and nobody who could had ever listened to him before.

Cole was suddenly fiercely glad to have broken that pattern, without even having known he was doing it.

"Yeah, man," he said aloud, clearing his throat. "Sure. What, you think I got something better to do than sail to South America with you on this hunk of junk? Please."

He looked down, after that. Focused on his hands, the gauze, getting the last length wrapped around Dani's thigh just right, and then taped it down, more precise about it than he needed to be.

When he was done, he let go.

And Dani said, "Thanks, Cole," and Cole was pretty sure he wasn't just talking about the bandage.

"No problem," Cole said, and meant it.

And then Dani smiled at him, sudden and bright, and added, "Okay, my turn."

"Huh?"

"Your leg," Dani said. "You did mine," and—yeah, okay, he had. Hadn't quite meant to do anything but finish cutting off that pant leg, but somehow he'd just kept going.

"Right," Cole said. "Okay."

Dani was quick, efficient, about cutting Cole's pants clear of the wound. He slid the knife flush to Cole's thigh to get the point underneath the edge of the cloth Cole had tied down around it, and Cole had to bite down hard on the inside of his cheek again to keep from shivering pointlessly.

And he was good. Careful, but not tentative. Pretty steady hands. When it was time to clean it out, he looked at Cole and grinned again, and said, "I'm not like you. I pour on two, okay?"—and then he fucking poured without even fucking counting at all, the smug bastard.

Cole cussed him out a little just for the distraction of it, piling the words up and watching Dani laugh in the sunlight.

And then Dani picked up the gauze and got down to business. He was good at that, too, not wrapping too tight or too loose, eyes fixed intently on Cole's thigh, and okay, no, don't go there, Cole reminded himself, even though it was already a little late for that.

"Nice," Cole said, when Dani was done. "Great job, man."

Dani looked surprised all over again at that—because sure, Cole thought grimly, of course he did. Cole hadn't said it to get anything out of him, or as the runup to talking him into something he didn't want to do, or to shut him up. Whole new experience for him, no doubt.

Jesus.

Dani coughed a little, awkward, and looked away, and then back again. "Yeah, well," he said. "You help me, and I help you. That's what makes us such a great team, right? The best."

"Uh, you're the one who shot me," Cole said. "And I shot you." But he couldn't quite keep himself from smiling.

Dani beamed back at him. Full-force, downright blinding, for a second.

But then it dimmed, almost as fast as it had shown up. And Dani bit his lip, and then blurted in a rush, "I didn't do it to stop you from running. Shoot you, I mean. I did it to stop you from—leaving."

Cole swallowed.

Because he understood that one, too, he was pretty sure. That it hadn't just been about stopping him from getting away with all the money; it had been about making sure that Dani would be able to keep up with him. That he wouldn't leave Dani behind.

Fuck it, he thought.

"Back there," he said to Dani, "that night in the jungle. Were you seriously going to kiss me?"

Dani's face changed—blank, suddenly, unreadable, eyes flat and wary. "For the name of the boat?" He shrugged easily, one-shouldered. "Sure, maybe."

"And how about now?" Cole said.

He didn't quite know how he'd gotten it out, around where his heart felt lodged tight in his throat. But he had; and it hung there in the air, which for all that the ocean breeze could do felt shocked to stillness, holding its breath.

Or maybe that was just Cole.

Dani was still watching him. There was something searching in it now, but Cole had no idea what it was he was looking for, or whether he was going to find it or not.

"I don't need the name of the boat anymore," Dani said at last.

Well. That was an answer, all right. Cole looked out across the water, and told himself it was just as bright and beautiful as it had been ten minutes ago, and he had just as much to be grateful for. He'd survived everything else today had had to throw at him, and he'd survive this too. No problem.

And then Dani reached out, and put a hand on Cole's shoulder—rubbed his thumb into the hollow of it, a quick brush like he couldn't help himself. Like he wanted to touch, if he thought he was allowed to.

"I don't need the name of the boat anymore," Dani repeated, and shrugged again. "So—maybe."

Cole looked at him.

Dani looked back.

"Oh, come on, man," Cole said, dizzy with relief, heart pounding. "We have _got_ to be able to do better than 'maybe'."

"Yeah?" Dani murmured. "You think you can convince me, huh?"

"I'm pretty sure luck's on my side today, yeah," Cole said, and leaned over, and kissed him.

When he was done, Dani's mouth was kind of red, and both of them were breathing embarrassingly hard. Dani blinked his eyes open, and wet his lips.

And then he made a considering sort of face, and cleared his throat, and said, "Mm, I don't know. I think I need a little more convincing, maybe."

"You jackass, I swear to god," Cole said, and tackled him so he toppled over backwards onto the deck, and then kissed him again.


End file.
